


A Shadow in the Glass

by Ritequette



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-22 17:13:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7447327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ritequette/pseuds/Ritequette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During a routine mission gone horribly wrong, Allen suffers a serious head injury. </p>
<p>When he finally wakes up, weeks later, to the relief of everyone, something about him...isn't quite right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've had the first two lines of this fic written for two months. I finally got off my butt and wrote the rest.

Kanda is the one who sees it happen. And also the one who blames himself for it.

They’re out on a mission in some godforsaken town in the middle of Germany. Abandoned. Left to rot. Crumbling houses everywhere. Roofs fallen in. Walls collapsed. Nobody in their right mind would come here of their own accord. Except stupid kids on a dare. Kids from a nearby town that isn’t quite dead (yet), who’ve been reporting strange sightings in this hellhole for months. Kanda wishes they had half a brain, even to share—then maybe he wouldn’t have gotten sent to this dump with the beansprout. 

Alas, here they are, standing in the middle of an empty street, debris from a nearby collapsed building strewn across the overgrown cobbles. Dusk is settling quickly in the forest that surrounds the town, and they need to find the Innocence and return to their inn before the moon gets too high in the sky; that’s when the akuma have been reported. “Strange specters” haunting the woods, said some ignorant locals when they arrived two hours ago.

Tch. If only they knew the truth. It’s a miracle none of their kids ended up dust in the wind. 

The beansprout takes a few steps forward, turning his head left and right, like he’s mapping out the place. But Kanda knows better—Allen Walker couldn’t tell north from south if he had a compass glued to his hand. So Kanda catches his attention with a growl, and then throws a scowl behind him for good measure, aimed at Two Spots, of course, who’s loitering in the background, leaning against what used to be a light pole.

The ex-Crow stares back at Kanda evenly, unaffected by his threat, and doesn’t move.

Shaking his head, Kanda addresses the beansprout. “One of the kids said he saw a green glow inside that old church over there. That’s probably where the Innocence is stashed. An altar or some shit. Let’s get in, get out, and get back. I don’t want to be fighting akuma all damn night.”

The beansprout sticks out his tongue in response and then snaps, “And if they follow us back to all the _living_ people? Then what? We catch the train and leave them to fend for themselves?”

“Don’t be stupid, beansprout. If they follow us—and I will know if they do—I’ll just destroy them all. Simple as that.” Kanda skirts by the shorter exorcist and marches off toward the rundown church, the steeple slanting at an angle so severe it’s a wonder the thing hasn’t cracked in half and tumbled to the soggy ground below. Maybe _God_ cares about his places of worship more than the homes of the dead.

A gust of wind shrieks by and rattles the entire church, steeple to steps.

_Or maybe not._

Kanda hears the beansprout huffing and puffing behind him, hears him mutter “The name’s Allen” under his breath. And for a second, Kanda doesn’t think the sprout will follow him to the church, too worked up by Kanda’s apparent nonchalance in the face of danger, in the face of threats to the innocents in the next town over. He’s always like _that_ , so concerned with what’s right in front of his face.

But then Kanda’s ears catch the beansprout’s footsteps trailing after him, heavy and slick on the rain-washed soil. _Maybe he’s learning,_ Kanda thinks. _At last._

He immediately takes that thought back when the sprout says, “Hey, stupid Kanda.”

Groaning, he peers over his shoulder, noticing that Two Spots still hasn’t moved from his position at the pole. The man is surveying the surrounding town with his sharp eyes, as if looking for any movement out of the ordinary. Kanda would think up more insults for him, but _he’s_ at least doing something useful. The sprout, on the other hand…

“What?” he barks out. 

The beansprout pauses a few feet behind him and pouts. “Don’t be so rude, Kanda. Christ. I was just going to suggest we take two separate entrances in case there are akuma hiding inside the church somewhere.”

Huh. Would you look at that? A _strategy_ from the beansprout?

Kanda shrugs. “Whatever. Take your pick.” He nods at the church. “You got the front door off its hinges and the side door next to the cemetery.”

The sprout eyes the mossy graves off to the left of the church and rolls his shoulders back. “I’ll take the cemetery. You can be the akuma bait and come through the main door.”

Before Kanda can spit out another comeback, the sprout hops the short metal fence encircling the cemetery and storms off toward the side door, partially concealed by a stubby pine tree recently overturned. The sprout skirts around the edge of a fresh grave and eyes the tree, contemplating how to best move it out of the way of the door. As he nears the tree, his lips chewing on the activation command for his Innocence, Kanda rolls his eyes and heads up the front steps—

_Fresh_ grave?

Shit.

“Beansprout, watch—!”

A Level 4 explodes out of the grave, mud flinging through the air, and launches itself straight at the sprout. Shit. Shit. _Shit._ (The damn thing knew how to hide, far enough down in the ground, to avoid the sprout’s cursed eye. Too smart. Too fucking smart. Too fucking _human_ , and it’s so, so wrong.)

The beansprout whips around to face the threat the same instant Kanda draws Mugen and shouts his activation. The sprout’s arm starts to transform as he reels back, trying to avoid the oncoming akuma, the oddly jointed, cherubic fingers reaching for his neck. Kanda charges forward, leaps over the fence, just as the sprout loses balance, wet soil giving out underneath his boots, and tumbles backward. Somewhere behind them, too far away, Kanda hears Two Spots calling for Allen in panic.

But no amount of shouting will help.

Not as the akuma changes tactics mid attack and forms a brutal first.

And drives its armored knuckles straight into the beansprout’s face. 

Kanda is ten steps away, the words to summon his dual swords on the tip of his tongue. And he thinks, in hindsight, that because he’s so close, too damn close and yet too far away, because he tries his best to save the sprout from a dumb mistake, a mistake on both their parts—because he is _there_ , in that exact spot, in a field of buried, rotting corpses, topped by rotting headstones… 

That is why hears the _sound_ that changes everything. And sees the blood that rewrites a life. 

The sound is the beansprout’s skull cracking wide open against the brick steps in front of the side door of the church. As Crown Clown’s cloak is just inches away from protecting its accommodator’s head. And the blood—God, the blood pools so _fast_ , a flooding river rushing out in all directions. 

And the beansprout doesn’t move. His Innocence cloak disintegrates, even as the Level 4 swings back around for another blow. He doesn’t move. His limbs go lax, his body limp, even as the akuma lunges toward him to rip him to pieces. He doesn’t move, half-lidded eyes staring at everything and nothing. He doesn’t move. 

Because his head injury is fatal.

Yes…Kanda is the one who sees it happen. And there’s no one else to blame.


	2. Chapter 2

Kanda doesn’t _think_ for the next sixteen hours. It’s not until his ass hits his mattress, the bedroom around him pitch black, no lights lit, no moon shining through the smudged window, that the jumbled events of the past day finally coalesce into something he can understand. It’s not until he strips off his coat, boots, and shirt, tossing them carelessly onto the floor, that he realizes the full implications of his actions. It’s not until he rests Mugen against the wall next to his bedframe, the sheath still smudged with dried smears of mud and blood, that Kanda truly realizes how badly he _fucked up_.

He lies back on the bed, muscles aching in a way they haven’t in a long time, and recalls the major points of the mission gone.

He remembers the sickening crack of the beansprout’s head against the steps, the Level 4 coming back around to finish the job. Not realizing the job was already done. The sprout was already dead, his skull _shattered_.

He remembers charging at the Level 4 full force, unleashing every ounce of his strength, too much strength, revealing more to the Noah—and to Central, via Two Spots—than he had intended to. They would be suspicious now, wondering if there was more to his power than he’d admitted. And their suspicions would be correct. He’d broken the critical point ages ago and hadn’t told a soul. The chains that came along with that great “accomplishment” were too heavy and unbreakable for his tastes.

He remembers forcing the Level 4 back into the grassy lot behind the church, unused cemetery space, and hacking and slashing the goddamned dark magic machine to tiny bits and pieces, the monster shrieking at him until it couldn’t shriek anymore. He’d been injured, two or three times, by the akuma, but his seal had taken care of it. Slower than it ever had before. But it was still enough. 

He remembers turning on his heels, standing amidst the oily, broken body parts of the destroyed 4, only to see Two Spots kneeling over the beansprout’s body—his _fresh corpse_ —with a look of utter despair ripping apart the feigned indifference he liked to paint over his skin.

Kanda isn’t the idiot Central wants him to be. He knows damn well Two Spots has developed a _soft_ spot for the sprout, just like everyone else.

Including Kanda himself, as loathe as he is to admit it.

It’s not something he would _ever_ say out loud, to anyone, but that stupid sprout has somehow managed to weasel his way into Kanda’s chest, into the fucked-up orb that passes as Kanda’s heart. And Kanda hates him all the more for it. He hasn’t allowed anyone in there in years. For a good reason. He hasn’t allowed anyone in since…since— 

Kanda rolls over onto his stomach and beats his head against his pillow, groaning. His memory of the past day is still too hazy in some places; he can’t remember exactly what he did or said in the moments after he defeated the 4 and returned to the side door of the church. The next clear point is the moment he decided to do what he’d promised himself he’d _never_ do for anyone in the Order, not even Lenalee:

He’d cut his wrist and used his blood to heal Allen Walker. 

Two Spots, his carefully constructed façade falling away into panic and grief, had watched him. Had understood. Of course he had. He _knows_. They all do. The second exorcist project is the biggest non-secret at the Order, next to the direct human experimentation that went on for even longer (and kept going on even after).

So Two Spots had watched, and with each passing second, as Kanda’s blood dripped down the beansprout’s throat, had calmed himself the way only a Crow could and carefully glued the pieces of his mask back together. Kanda had been tempted to scream at him for it. He’d wanted to wrap his akuma-oil-covered hand around the bastard’s throat and scream in his face, release every pent-up frustration he’d felt for the last nine years, spit his curses into the eyes and ears of someone who was _complicit._  

Someone complicit who wasn’t already dead and buried.

But he’d refrained. Because the beansprout, even after swallowing Kanda’s offered blood, was still a cooling corpse lying prone on the steps of a church. And Kanda needed Two Spots to carry him back to the next town over while Kanda acted as the lookout for any other high-level akuma in the area. Two Spots wouldn’t be able to play his part if Kanda strangled him half to death.

Together, they’d taken the sprout to the nearest doctor, who, of course, had been useless. The old man had actually instructed them to drop the sprout’s body in the town’s _morgue_. Kanda had been furious, but he couldn’t really blame the guy. The beansprout _had_ been dead. He’d been _dead_ dead, chest still, heart stopped, pulse nonexistent, head a bloody, broken mess… 

He’d been gone for so long that Kanda was sure he wasn’t coming back.

Two Spots and Kanda, standing in front of a splintery bench on the outskirts of town, the sprout wrapped in Kanda’s coat like a shroud, laid on top of the wood—they’d been _seconds_ from telling Komui that Allen Walker had died on a mission. Seconds.

And then Allen fucking Walker had come back to life.

Of course, Kanda thinks, submerged in the darkness, his face pressing deep into the stuffing of his pillow, a thin layer of sweat on his skin despite the fact it isn’t hot. It’s a cold sweat. From a dread creeping through his veins. Of course Allen Walker came back. Of course they’d hauled him back here, his heartbeat strong again, his skin warm to the touch, alive enough to satisfy even Lenalee, who would have lost her mind had she seen the sprout a few hours before.

Of course Allen Walker now rests in the infirmary, hair sheared short, a thick helmet of bandages wrapped around his skull. Somehow, he still lives, despite the flecks of grayish brain matter Kanda is sure he saw smudged across the faded brick of the church steps. Somehow, he still breathes, despite the pool of blood that nearly bled him dry, cascading down the steps in a waterfall, quenching the soil. Somehow, he still lives…and yet…

Kanda finally pulls his face from the mattress and glances at the wrist he sliced open with Mugen. The cut has already healed, but Kanda can see the faintest scar where it once was, even in the darkness, almost like it possesses some kind of unnatural glow. He can’t describe what he’s feeling, shrouded in the blackness, a coldness that has nothing to do with temperature crawling slowly into his pores. The best word he can think of: _wrongness._

There’s a profound sense of wrongness covering this whole scenario like a thin veil. He can see through it, to the world where things are _right_ , and almost pretend it isn’t there. But the moment he moves his eyes, he catches the billowing of this veil in his periphery, and the sensation of _wrong, wrong, wrong_ creeps ever closer, burrows ever deeper.

Right now, Kanda knows, Allen Walker is in a coma in the infirmary several floors away. He hasn’t woken up since he was _killed_ , not once, not even for a moment. There’s a possibility that he’ll never wake up again, the brain trauma too severe to recover from. There’s a possibility he’ll lie in that infirmary bed forever, until his body rots away and leaves only his Innocence arm behind.

_There are a lot of possibilities when it comes to brain trauma_ , the Head Nurse explained to them all earlier.

But, lying in the darkness, in the silence, in the stillness of the all-encompassing night—Kanda _knows_ , somehow, some way. He _knows_ that when the beansprout wakes up—and he _will_ , tomorrow, next week, or next month, or next year. And when that day finally comes…

Kanda knows that there will be something profoundly, deeply, undeniably, inescapably… 

… _wrong_ with Allen Walker.


	3. Chapter 3

No one is in the infirmary when Allen Walker wakes up. Four weeks, six days, and seventeen hours after he was killed by a Level 4 outside a rundown church. And after the fact, after the panic, after the _bizarre_ confrontation, after the rush of bodies in the hall, everyone searching, searching for the comatose boy missing from his bed—Kanda wonders if someone high in the sky is playing a cruel joke on them all. Because Allen Walker hasn’t been alone in the infirmary for the entire month he’s been there, not until the _exact_ moment he wakes up. 

Kanda himself has sat there for hours on end, in the dead of night, unable to sleep, sat there and watched the beansprout lie motionless in the crisp white sheets. He doesn’t tell anyone about this, of course, that he’s taken to slipping in after hours and leaving before the Head Nurse makes her first rounds. That such behavior became second nature in a matter of days. Kanda doesn’t tell anyone he hasn’t slept more than two or three hours a night since the day after he dragged Allen’s once-a-corpse back through the Order’s front door.

In fact, Kanda doesn’t tell anyone _anything_ regarding Allen Walker, outside of his formal report of the “incident”—not his personal feelings, not his worries, not the dread still brooding in his gut—until the moment he walks into the infirmary after dinner, for his official “Allen Watch” shift, as designated by Komui…and finds that the Allen he is supposed to watch is not there.

He traces the same path he’s taken for weeks, pulls back the familiar white curtain, wrinkled from so many hands pulling it to and fro, and finds nothing of note in the space behind it except an empty infirmary cot. On the nightstand next to the cot is an overabundance of flower arrangements and cards, a garish display added to day after day by the sprout’s circle of friends. Kanda knew the sprout _had_ friends, certainly more friends than him, but he didn’t realize that Allen Walker had ingratiated himself to the Order so much that four dozen people would send him get-well gifts multiple times per week.

Yet again, he underestimated Allen Walker.

Twice in a row, apparently—seeing as the beansprout has apparently risen from what appeared to be a permanent coma and immediately went traipsing about the halls.

Kanda backs up from the white curtain and surveys the rest of the infirmary. No one else has been injured on recent missions, not even a Finder, so the place is empty. Even the nurses and other staff have headed out for dinner. The only person manning the infirmary must be the nurse on watch, who Kanda passed by the door when he entered. But she’s stationed at the opposite end of the infirmary, and given the angle, she wouldn’t have been able to see the sprout—if he’d gone around to the infirmary’s secondary door, which leads to a service hall.

But why do that? Kanda wonders. Did the sprout not want people to see him?

Kanda spies the little nook across the room where the secondary door is tucked away and shuffles over to it. As he suspected, it’s slightly ajar—even though it’s supposed to be locked. Kanda squats down and checks the lock. _Somebody_ picked it using a couple of medical tools they must have snagged from a supply drawer. Kanda rests his hand on Mugen’s hilt, wondering if he should alert everyone that their precious sprout has vanished into the winding maze of service corridors.

But then the dread in Kanda’s gut reminds him something is _wrong_ with the sprout. And whatever it is that’s wrong could be dangerous. Noah dangerous? Is the beansprout gone after all, the 14 th roaming around in his place? Is that what’s happened? Allen Walker whisked away into oblivion from a head wound, the Noah usurping his body in his absence? Out of all the possibilities, Kanda thinks, it’s the worst possible one—and yet, also the most likely.

Kanda grips Mugen tightly and pushes through the service door. 

The hall is narrow, claustrophobic, and dimly lit with sconce-shaped lamps bolted to the walls, far and few between. Kanda doesn’t know how often the halls are used, but the dirt on the floor suggests rarely. Which works in his favor. He bends down to see in the dim light, spying what he wants almost immediately: fresh footprints in the dust, leading to the right. He tries his best to picture the layout of the Order’s main building, but he can only approximate where the service corridor could lead.

Kanda turns right and heads off down the hall.

He tries to tread as quietly as possible, hoping that, if the Noah is in control, he’ll get a chance to sneak up on the bastard and attack before anyone gets hurt. Idly, Kanda wonder that, if the Noah is indeed in control…why not just make an Ark Gate and the get the hell out of the Order? Surely the 14th can’t be stupid enough to think wandering around in the enemy’s stronghold is a good idea. Another Noah might have attacked their headquarters once, but she had a lot of akuma and the element of surprise. The 14th has the sprout’s skinny body and a still-healing skull fracture.

Kanda winds his way through the maze of service halls, turning left and right as needed to keep following the sprout’s footsteps on the stone. After several minutes of catching up to no one, Kanda is worried that the sprout might have gotten too far ahead—but then he remembers that Lenalee said she visited Allen right before heading to the cafeteria for her own dinner. That means the beansprout had less than fifteen minutes to escape from the infirmary before Kanda got there. He _can’t_ be but so far, not in current his physical condition. (Unless he’s being bolstered by Noah powers…)

Finally, Kanda makes another right, only to be nearly blinded. He’s come back around to a main hallway in a little-used wing of the building, the walls lined with wide windows letting in the early evening light. The sun shines directly through the panes on its way toward the horizon, and right now, the light is at its peak, bright orange beams cast across the floor. It’s a _nice_ view, Kanda admits, one he didn’t realize the building possessed, built for practicality as it was. But it seems that Allen Walker has a knack for finding the hidden gems.

Because he’s standing right in front of the center window in the hall, gazing out at the sunset.

His right palm is pressed to the window, face so close to the glass that Kanda can see his warm breath fogging it up, even from a distance. His left arm hangs at his side, almost unnaturally limp, like he can’t move it—or perhaps doesn’t know what to do with it. The bandages that were around his head have been unwrapped and now rest on the dirty floor in a pile by his feet. His hair is a poorly cut mess, uneven, from where the nurses had to quickly chop it off to get access to his head wound.

The wound itself is clearly visible, in the middle of a completely shaved patch on the back of his head. Angry black stitches, fifty-eight of them, pulling the split skin tight over top of the sprout’s healing skull. Seeing it for the first time since the day Allen was killed by the 4—Kanda feels nauseous. Even though it appears to be healing, it still doesn’t look like a survivable wound. And not for the first time, Kanda wonders if he made a dire mistake in giving Allen his blood that day.

Had he…?

Had he _created_ something profane, using the cursed blood given to him during that atrocity of a science experiment?

Kanda stands silently at the end of the hall for nearly five minutes, hardly breathing, as he watches what could very well be a Noah in sprout’s clothing peer wistfully out the window at the falling sun. The sprout doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move anywhere, doesn’t at all seem concerned that he’s in the Black Order’s headquarters and is potentially surrounded by enemy combatants.

So does that mean it’s _not_ the 14 th, or…?

A cloud cuts across the sinking sun, and the hall goes dark. Allen Walker breaks out of his stupor, backing away from the window with shaky steps. He drops his right hand to his left arm, rubbing the Innocence-infused skin, fingers trailing down and down until they touch the cross notched into the back of his hand. He shakes his head, uneven hair falling across his temples, and sighs deeply. Too deeply. Like he’s lived _too_ long, way too long—despite only being alive for sixteen years.

Kanda, statue still at the end of the hall, tightens his grip on Mugen’s hilt again and just barely parts the blade from the sheath.

But it’s enough. To make a sound in the silence.

Allen Walker gasps and turns to face him.

For a moment, Kanda doesn’t breathe. 

And then, Allen Walker, blinking in confusion, a frown etched into his face instead of his usual fake smile, not an _ounce_ of recognition in his pale blue eyes, stares at Kanda, breathless, and says with an accent that is not his, “Oh, Good Lord. Looks like I’ve been caught at last. _Ha._ Should have seen that coming.” A pause, short and awkward. “Well then, _sir,_ if you would be so kind, before you throw me in prison for trespassing, of course…Um, could you possibly tell me where the hell I am? Oh! And while you’re at it—who the hell are _you_?”


End file.
